ACE Spectrum
ACE Spectrum
Ace Spectrum is about you — the ACE Learning Centers.
It’s a quick sharing of ideas, inspiration, opinions and best practices among our continuing education organizations.
Please join the conversation.
Teamwork and “Pitch to Air” Strategies Help Audio Academy Students Create @WORK Stories
By Ben Trefny, News Director, KALW, Listener Supported Public Radio, and Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, Audio Academy ’21
We’ve had a few more Audio Academy stories air in the past week. They’re part of our @WORK series, looking at how people’s vocations have and haven’t changed during the pandemic:
How One Oakland Chiropractor Is Treating The Ailments Taking A Backseat During The Pandemic — Carla Esteves
A Medical Clown Proves That Laughter Is Essential — Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman
Azul shared some thoughts about how things work behind-the-scenes at KALW to bring these stories to the airwaves:
Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, Audio Academy ’21
What I enjoy most about the Audio Academy is the teamwork. As I go through the paces of the 10-month training program, I have the privilege of working closely with many different members of the KALW staff, each a specialist in their own distinct piece of the audio production puzzle.
This is perhaps best illustrated by a document that is distributed to Audio Academy fellows as our first feature length story is assigned. The document is called “Pitch to Air”. It basically outlines, in clear terms, how a story goes from conception to publishing. You can also think of this document as a checkpoint race, where fellows, upon completing a checkpoint, advance to work with another member of the KALW team for a specific purpose.
The first stop in Pitch to Air begins, unsurprisingly, with pitching, where the fellows present their story idea to the KALW team at a weekly morning check-in. This is perhaps the most critical practice we can receive at the Audio Academy. As much as we don’t like to acknowledge it, we Audio Academy fellows will have to fly the nest come June, and potentially make our way as fledgling freelancers. If we don’t know how to pitch a story and receive feedback, our first flight will surely be challenging.
Once the pitch is (hopefully) accepted, we are assigned an editor. The editors, with gracious patience and a good nose for what works and what doesn’t, assist us through a reporting plan and three drafts of a story. They’re very available and understanding. I don’t feel like there’s a question I can’t ask them.
Then the story is off to the engineers for mixing. One of the silver linings of working through the pandemic is the opportunity to watch on Zoom as a professional engineer mixes your story, giving you tips along the way. This is a great Pro Tools (audio editing software) skill building opportunity. I’m sure most audio journalists have had a “Pro Tools moment”, and can agree that the more proficient in Pro Tools, the better.
Finally, once reviewed a final time by the journalist and the editor, it’s off to the production manager of the news department, who copy edits and publishes the web post that accompanies the story. Lastly, the story is presented in style by the host of Crosscurrents, KALW’s nightly news and culture magazine.
The KALW Audio Academy is fertile ground for aspiring radio journalists. It seems that everyone who works at the newsroom takes a hand in mentoring the fellows. The opportunity to work alongside audio production professionals every step of the way is, to me, the most rewarding aspect of this program. It is this teamwork that gets aspiring radio journalists from pitch to air.
Journalists at KALW Provide Training/Insight to Rebuild Trust in News Media
By Ben Trefny, News Director, KALW Audience Supported Public Media and Andrew J.M. Garcia, Audio Academy ‘21
This week has provided a sea change for the United States and for the world.
In the same month that riotous supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol, the same location hosted a peaceful transfer of presidential power to Joe Biden.
As a journalist, it means a lot. For the last four years and more, reporters working hard to tell the truth, and truth to power, have been attacked from a bully pulpit as purveyors of “fake news.” It’s led to mistrust, to violence, and during the Capitol insurrection, to graffiti on an interior wall that read, “Murder the media.” It’s terrible and terrifying.
It’s also remarkable that so many blatantly insult and threaten people whose very job is to seek truth, who have codes of ethics around fairness, and who struggle with the meaning of objectivity. And yet, though Donald Trump has been voted out of office, it does not mean the journalists’ job becomes any easier.
There is a lot of work to be done.
A listener wrote a letter to me last week sharing a link to a study tracking distrust of mass media. It’s a largely partisan lack of trust, fueled in part by agenda-oriented politics. But the erosion of public trust in journalists has been taking place for longer than four years. It’s been more like four decades.
I’ve worked in this industry for many years, and I’ve taught hundreds of people to be journalists. Just because the new United States president is not, now, calling journalists “the enemy of the people” does not mean trust will suddenly be re-established. It may instead cause a relaxation where there must be diligence. Journalists have to hold every elected official equally accountable. We must make strong efforts to report on the root causes of inequality and unrest. We must redouble our efforts to connect with neglected and misrepresented communities, so they can recognize the value of journalism. It won’t happen because we say it’s valuable, but because we show it.
One of the ways KALW does this work, of course, is through training. Whether we’re working with people incarcerated in state prisons, teaching workshops to students enrolled in Bay Area high schools, or training the folks from around our region in our Audio Academy, we’re always examining journalism. Whose voices do we include? How are people represented? Who is telling the stories? It’s all important.
Last week, we launched a series of stories in a series called @WORK. These are profiles of people from many different communities that are produced by fellows in our Audio Academy. We’re airing new ones every Tuesday and Wednesday. Here are the first two:
Farming, Karens, And COVID-19 — Wren Farrell
Photojournalism In A Pandemic: Telling Stories Without Getting Too Close — Andrew J.M. Garcia
And here are some thoughts Andrew shared about his experience as an early-career journalist.
Andrew J.M. Garcia, Audio Academy ’21
I initially had my reservations about starting a brand new career in radio and taking place in a nine month intensive training program in the middle of a pandemic. It felt like a scary, if not mildly foolish endeavor to embark on in the midst of such uncertainty. But I couldn’t help but feel that KALW was offering me a shot at something I had craved for so long, a chance to feel like my work had purpose. That in my career I would have a chance to have a positive impact on society and make the world around me a better place, at least in some small way.
In Audio Academy I am being given the tools not just to witness history but to document it. And what a time to be documenting! I have participated in live election coverage, written stories about the rippling impact of the pandemic on schools and journalists, and had a great time doing it. The community, education, and opportunity that has been given to me by KALW and ACE, I hope to pay back in full through my newfound drive to better my community. Through diverse storytelling, ambitious reporting, and a strong desire to help those journalists who come after me learn and benefit much in the same way I am now with Audio Academy.
My one goal coming into Audio Academy was to feel comfortable calling myself a journalist. To know that I have the skills, experience, compassion and ethics to make it as a reporter and know that in my heart I am worthy of that title. I am not quite there yet but I know I’m close and that all of the wonderful people at KALW will keep pushing and supporting me until I am. For that, I am very grateful.
How Do Educators Teach About the Recent US Capital Events? Listen to the Students
By Martha Sessums, President, ACE
The events of January 6 were shocking to many US citizens. How could a mob march to the US Capital where Congress was doing its constitutional duty to confirm the election of President-elect Joe Biden?
One of my first thoughts was how do educators talk to their students about this, especially the ACE Learning Center students at schools that serve a high percentage of immigrant students? Didn’t many of these immigrant students come to the US to escape these kinds of actions from their countries? What do they think now?
I reached out to the education experts at Oakland International High School (OIHS) and San Francisco International High School (SFIHS) and was rewarded with hearing about the amazing faith both students and educators had in the US system and how quickly best practices were developed and implemented in the virtual classrooms.
“Throughout the district, principals and teachers struggled to make meaning of the events for themselves, but rapidly had to turn to the work of helping students understand what took place,” said Carmelita Reyes, Founding Principal of OIHS. “Educators leaned on one another and shared resources and strategies that were age appropriate. This will not be a one-day lesson. The events and consequences of (that) week will reverberate throughout our nation for a long time.”
While appropriate best practices were used in classes, what was great to see was the attitude of the students whose faith in their chosen country, the US, was unshaken.
“SFIHS teachers reported that most students already had the understanding that . . . people tried to attack the capital to try to overturn a free and fair election,” said Tara Hobson, Principal at SFIHS. “Although January 6th was a dark day, our future as a nation looks bright because our students are brilliant and aware and have a strong sense of reality and faith in our country.”
Lauren Markham, Director of the OIHS Learning Lab, said the educators at OIHS had much of the same experience.
“While the siege of the capitol left some U.S. Americans shocked and many outraged, it’s important to note that for people who have already experienced severe repression both here and abroad, the events of last Wednesday . . . may not have come as such a surprise,” said Markham. “In light of this, we want to make sure that our staff function as sounding boards for students concerns and as sources of information, calm and understanding, letting our students take the lead on what they want to discuss and how.”
Rachel Sadler, 12th Grade Government teacher at SFIHS had a similar experience.
“The insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th horrified my students, but it did not necessarily surprise them,” said Sadler. “Their main questions seemed to be around accountability and justice, which they know is so often and easily denied. Many wondered whether the perpetrators of these riots would be held accountable and go to jail.”
For a lot of students, it was a callout for creating community and staying strong to fight against hate. SFIHS 12th Grade student Elisa Aguilar Cinto echoed many student’s call for community.
“We need to support each other and not let hate spread in our society and not have people believe something that is not true,” said Cinto. “I noticed that (the event at the US Capital) is just creating violence instead of creating peace in our community. However, a community can move forward by supporting each other and that’s why we all are here in this world to work together; love each other; to build a community without violence or discrimination against other. Honestly, we all are the same creation of God and there shouldn’t be hate amongst the American nation.”
This is focus on community and future by the new generation of well-educated and inspired immigrant students is heartening.
“I feel grateful and encouraged that so many of my students are able to name the concerns that arise from racist policing and white privilege in our country, and to expect and demand more of our government,” said Sadler. “I feel hopeful for a future where these same students will become activists and decision-makers influencing how the United States must change. We are all going to be very lucky to live in the world they help create.”
Yes, we are. Thank you OIHS and SFIHS students and educators for your courage and community.